Gimped weapons
Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:05 pm
About a week ago I started to get into the post-50 harvesting and crafting game, and I've run into some interesting problems. I am a melee weapon crafter that harvests his own mats. In the Cities of Intuition, I had nodes for all four of the high-damage components for weapons: big shells, oath bark, dzao/buo fiber and scrath wood (sometimes tansy). I was crafting max damage weapons with these materials with no problem, life was good.
Now I am looking for higher q mats, so for the past week I have been venturing into very dangerous regions looking for nodes. After nearly a week, I finally found choice nodes for all four components, the fourth one last night. Now the mats I found were not the same: I found horny shells, oath bark, anete fiber and scrath wood. I saw that the stats on the mats were not as high damage as the old mats I was using, but I figured that I would try it out anyway by making some weapons with them. If it's not as high damage, I reasoned, maybe it will be faster, lower penalty, better dodge or parry, or something else that will make it appealing enough to sell.
I bought a Medium Quality Long Sword plan and made a MQ sword at q60 with the new mats. Here's the surprise for me: it was inferior in every respect except one to my Low Quality q50 Long Sword. The damage was 23 points lower, the speed was lower, the Target Parry Modifier and Target Dodge Modifier were exactly the same (0) and the penalty was the same, 50. The only thing that was better was the weight: the MQ sword was 1.5 kg lighter (who cares). Now looking at the mats, the stats skew hard toward TDM, but the finished weapon does not reflect any improvement in that stat. None of the stats of the materials, in fact, seems to have any impact on the weapon other than speed, damage and lightness.
This is a gimp weapon, totally useless and unsaleable. Putting aside the fact that a weapon labeled "medium quality" ought to be better than one labeled "low quality", my question is was it intended that only damage and speed would matter? Why even bother with the other stats on the materials if so? From where I sit, there is one shell type and one bark type worth harvesting. All the rest are crap: choice, excellent or otherwise.
After I made this weapon, and realized that 3 of the 4 choice nodes I spent a week finding are now useless, I have to admit to being discouraged enough that I had to log off. I just don't want to spend another week or more trying to randomly scan sections of ground for 3 specific types of 3 specific mats in choice or better, all the while dodging heinously high aggro mobs. If specific item tracking worked, it might be slightly less painful, but it doesn't (for a mathematical proof that it doesn't, see the crafting player guide section).
I always thought that the reason you had all the different stats on materials is that it would provide diversity of crafted items: some guys would sell high damage weapons, some high speed weapons, some with high parry modifiers, some with low action penalty, etc. Apparently this is not the case: there is one high damage/high speed combination, and any other combination of mats is inferior, even to weapons of a supposedly lower tier.
Very disappointing.
Now I am looking for higher q mats, so for the past week I have been venturing into very dangerous regions looking for nodes. After nearly a week, I finally found choice nodes for all four components, the fourth one last night. Now the mats I found were not the same: I found horny shells, oath bark, anete fiber and scrath wood. I saw that the stats on the mats were not as high damage as the old mats I was using, but I figured that I would try it out anyway by making some weapons with them. If it's not as high damage, I reasoned, maybe it will be faster, lower penalty, better dodge or parry, or something else that will make it appealing enough to sell.
I bought a Medium Quality Long Sword plan and made a MQ sword at q60 with the new mats. Here's the surprise for me: it was inferior in every respect except one to my Low Quality q50 Long Sword. The damage was 23 points lower, the speed was lower, the Target Parry Modifier and Target Dodge Modifier were exactly the same (0) and the penalty was the same, 50. The only thing that was better was the weight: the MQ sword was 1.5 kg lighter (who cares). Now looking at the mats, the stats skew hard toward TDM, but the finished weapon does not reflect any improvement in that stat. None of the stats of the materials, in fact, seems to have any impact on the weapon other than speed, damage and lightness.
This is a gimp weapon, totally useless and unsaleable. Putting aside the fact that a weapon labeled "medium quality" ought to be better than one labeled "low quality", my question is was it intended that only damage and speed would matter? Why even bother with the other stats on the materials if so? From where I sit, there is one shell type and one bark type worth harvesting. All the rest are crap: choice, excellent or otherwise.
After I made this weapon, and realized that 3 of the 4 choice nodes I spent a week finding are now useless, I have to admit to being discouraged enough that I had to log off. I just don't want to spend another week or more trying to randomly scan sections of ground for 3 specific types of 3 specific mats in choice or better, all the while dodging heinously high aggro mobs. If specific item tracking worked, it might be slightly less painful, but it doesn't (for a mathematical proof that it doesn't, see the crafting player guide section).
I always thought that the reason you had all the different stats on materials is that it would provide diversity of crafted items: some guys would sell high damage weapons, some high speed weapons, some with high parry modifiers, some with low action penalty, etc. Apparently this is not the case: there is one high damage/high speed combination, and any other combination of mats is inferior, even to weapons of a supposedly lower tier.
Very disappointing.
